of learning
by vivafiction
Summary: let us render this hatred invalid -— katara & zuko. s3, the western air temple.
1. —the boundaries

**title** — of learning  
**pairing** — katara & zuko, mild aang & katara  
**warnings** — this is an unbeta'd piece of work, oops  
**etc** — i probably shouldn't start new things but oh well, it's just a drabble series and i sorta know where it's headed. i based this around a quote by **charles caleb colton**: "we hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them."

…

**i. try to make it better instead of trying to destroy it**  
of learning the boundaries  
…

Aang thinks this is beneficial.

Katara thinks that Aang would sculpt with the Avatar State, he would breathe air into the bones of his deceased people, coat them with earth and push water through their veins and light their eyes with fire and pluck their spirits from the Spirit World—and think it erasure for all the Fire Nation has done.

But she floats down into the lotus position, tossing her thicket of curls over her shoulder and glaring into the face of her enemy, whose widened eyes and primly shut lips lend an aura of shock and nervousness to the air.

Aang sits down perpendicular to the two of them. He presses his fingertips into the dirt in front of him and draws his hands closer together; the ground shifts and both Zuko and Katara yelp as their knees collide.

"This is a terrible idea," she bites out, her nails digging into the red fabric at her knees.

"I—" Zuko's protests die on his lips as Katara levels another potent glare at him, and he looks down, fringes of his hair shading his eyes.

"Mediating is important," Aang says in a bright voice, resting his hands on their knees with a childish smile, a smile that speaks to how he thinks the world should work, and Katara thinks that perhaps a failure on a small scale like this will wake him up to reality. "Maybe if you two learn more about one another—"

"What is there to _learn_ about him that we don't already know?" She huffs, hair fluttering from in front of her face, and Zuko's head snaps up, those glittering bright eyes narrowed at her.

"You know _nothing_—"

"I know what's _important—_!"

"Not to me!"

"—and it's that you can't be trusted," she ends on a harsh stab of a whisper, but their eyes are still locked with one another in a deadly gaze. Aang coughs and then it is Zuko who looks away, shame filling the bright red of his cheeks.

"This is _exactly_ what I mean," Aang says with a tone exasperated with lifetimes of conflict built behind it. "We used to do this in the Air Temples when there were disagreements. All you have to do is sit in this position and share one thing—one _important_ thing—about yourself. I believe that if you learn about the things that are important to other people, you'll be able to understand them more, and, _heh_, you two really need to understand each other."

He scratches the back of his head and smiles at them, but it is Katara whom he softens. Zuko's eyes still rest in his lap, his cheeks stained red. "Okay, Aang," Katara relents in a soft, understanding voice, and it's so startling that she barely recognizes it herself; the roundness of Zuko's eyes shows he doesn't recognize it either.

His lips uncurl over his teeth in a smile that frightens her because she's never been that happy, never been pleased by little things such as reconciliation and friendship and possibilities. "Five minutes!" He adds in a bright voice, and then he is a tornado spinning away from the two of them.

…

**notes** — i like to think that if zuko and katara learned more about one another, instead of the roundabout way they gained their information, that there would have been no choice for zutara endgame. i'm thinking this may have a little over twenty installments from looking at a rough outline, but what do i even know. also a tiny thanks to **shannon** because her opinion matters a lot.


	2. —enemy tactics

**title** — of learning  
**pairing** — katara & zuko, mild aang & katara  
**warnings** — none  
**etc** — for all of my senpais who wanted an update

…

**ii. i've been down this memorial road before**  
of learning enemy tactics  
…

Katara doesn't realize that five minutes have passed until a cool breeze tickles the back of her neck, Aang's voice filtering through her head slowly. "You guys are _still_ sitting here?"

She cranes her head to the side to look at him, her hands pressed onto her thighs, and sends him an uneasy smile (there's something about the softness in his voice that keeps her calm, but she's not quite sure what that is, exactly).

It does catch her offguard, however, when Zuko speaks up behind her.

"I don't know what to say," his voice is heavy, heavier than even its trademark rasp, the way he always seems to inflect the weight of the world with his words. Aang's eyes widen from curiosity to shock before he moves over to sit beside the firebender, floating past her. Zuko seems to squirm in Aang's presence, as if it's impossible for the two of them to inhabit such close quarters, what with them being so different.

"Something important," Aang's eyes crinkle in the corners and Katara has to smother the smile from her own lips, because it is _not_ an appropriate time for it, "Share something that means a lot to you."

A thousand thoughts seem to crawl across Katara's mind, thoughts of relics long lost in the snow, of the way she used to hop in her father's footprints (and how huge the world had seemed then, standing in boots that were ten times the size of her own), things that weren't really _things_ at all.

"That sounds great," Aang says to Zuko, his hand fastened on the older boy's shoulder, and Katara realizes she's zoned out for the entirety of their conversation. "This time, when I come back," he stands and Katara tilts her head up to look at him as he moves by, dropping his hand to rest in the froth of curls tangled on her shoulder, "I hope you've at least spoken to each other, okay!"

Katara's eyes flit over Zuko for only a few moments, long enough to watch him fold his hands into his lap and stare down at them, before she watches Aang retreat in colors of sunset, his gait feather light.

There's nothing to say, because she has nothing to say. She takes strands of her hair into her hands, threads them loosely while she thinks of all the things she could do with the time she's wasting here, sitting in front of this exiled Prince. They're so close that she can feel the heat wafting from his body (because neither of them have moved from where Aang pushed the earth together, a tiny rift in the ground between them from where the rocks collided), so close that she doesn't have to reach too far before her fingers are hovering close to the furled scarred flesh over his face.

This is so, completely and utterly—

"I burned myself."

When she looks up, his hand is cupped like there is a candle in its center and she expects flame to burst, but it doesn't; instead, he touches the tips of his fingers together, rubbing his own fingertips. "When I first learned I could firebend, I burned myself. My father said it was because my chi was weak."

She creases a frown deep across her lips, because Zuko says _father_ in such an oppressive way that it hurts even her, but she doesn't speak. And even when he falls silent, she distracts herself by watching the thin pale fingers trace over wounds that have healed long ago. "I was always ready to use my firebending to hurt other people instead. And I only ever—" _I only ever hurt myself_. "When I took up swords, I was taught restraint. And deliberation. And being aware that I had the choice whether or not to strike with harmful intent."

When he shifts, he shifts the both of them; Katara scoots back slightly, frowning. "That might not be important to you, but it is to me." He shrugs his shoulders and without much of a warning, he stands to brush the wrinkles out of his pants.

"Wait," she grinds her teeth in annoyance, "it's supposed to be my turn, isn't it?!" But Zuko doesn't turn around, and after Katara scrambles to her feet, she doesn't have the drive to chase him down.

…

But she watches his eyes when she sits on the other side of the fire, how there's a fire that simply sways and dances and slips through the air, and how it doesn't matter what surrounds it, that it will burn carelessly (carefree) in ways he would never.

She doesn't really know what to do with this new information (and she hopes Aang doesn't ask).

…

**notes** — this will be a lot more rapidly updated, promise. (i sorta forgot about it for a little while, there.)


	3. —to share perspective

**title** — of learning  
**pairing** — katara & zuko, mild aang & katara  
**warnings** — none  
**etc** — for **rachel** and **beantara**, because her sass inspires me

…

**iii. let me throw my head back and laugh**  
of learning to share perspective  
…

Zuko can never enjoy the air that pulls through his clothes as he slips between levels of the air temple. Sometimes, it can be so strong and so suffocating that he anticipates a fistful of air to grip the back of his tunic and toss him into the crevasse below (and even though he suspects it is where he belongs, something about the wind being stolen from his lungs until the shattering of his spine against the earth doesn't seem fitting to him, lying there as all the air rushes back for a final, hauntingly desperate inhale).

He always seems to aimlessly wander towards the spot for their mediation, as if it pulls at him, the earth peeling back and pressing together, a tiny ridged mountain that he and Katara always straddle. Zuko pictures curls of fire on one side, running along the small slope, never to intertwine with the foamy waves that crest on the opposite side. He tries to count the hours that have passed since he last spoke, mere slivers of an entire day slipping away as he thinks.

It was foolish to expect her to be stretched under the pressure of the gravity in his words, because she could have never understood those feelings. He'd wrestled so long with his right to make choices, wrestled with the fire that burned in his veins and begged to destroy.

No, Katara would have never understood what it was like to push poison through his own body for years, to fuel it with hatred and bitterness, to constantly have to struggle between hurting others or hurting himself, because fire only ever hurt, only ever reduced beauty to ash. (He'd long since taught himself not to remember how fire melts the flesh from bone immediately, taught himself to desensitize it all.) The decision to withhold didn't exist with fire, not the way it did when he handled steel.

"How long have you been sitting here?"

She is a formidable woman, because he knows the warrior's heart that tears at her insides, even though the sight of her with her hair wound in a dripping, spiral bun and her lips poked into a pout leaves him to wonder how she retains her softness. She is formidable, and she is a woman, and Zuko knows better than to let either of those facts disarm him from the validity of the other. (To say, that her softness does not discredit her ferocity, and that her ferocity does not overshadow her softness.)

"A few minutes," Zuko replies, but she sits so suddenly that it hardly matters, and something floral and earth scented drifts across the small space. When she scoots forward, their knees touch in a splash of chill, freshness that drags his thoughts into the fact that she was bathing.

"Last time, I, uh," she fumbles, and he huffs quietly.

"I didn't mean to just walk away like that," he frowns, and she raises an eyebrow in frustration.

"Yeah, well, don't do it again, okay?" Katara folds her arms across her chest, and he swallows; a perfect mixture of her wrath and her femininity, all in one gesture. "I didn't know how to explain to Aang that I didn't speak."

Her cheeks scatter with blush but he doesn't say anything about it. "I'll follow the rules, promise."

Katara seems wholly unimpressed, but she purses her lips in thought and that is enough to sate him for now. For a few minutes, the only thing to listen to is the sound of their breaths mingled together, like living currents of wind back and forth. He coughs into the crook of his elbow for what feels like an eternity; Katara shifts and pulls her hair out of the knot to let it dry.

"Listen, I don't like this idea any more than you do," she tips her head back in a way that Zuko can only think belongs to a royal, someone entitled and confident, and yet Katara retains none of the sharpness he recognizes from his experiences, "but I suppose, until Aang comes along, we have to, uh—"

"Bullshit?" Zuko blurts out, and something like a smirk (or is it a real, genuine smile?) tears across her soft lips, and he thinks he even sees her shoulders twitch to repress a laugh.

…

"I just freeze a walkway," she says, a devious look pinned onto her features, looking at him with a slightly sadistic amusement.

"But _how_?" Zuko's hands crumple in front of him in confusion as he stares at her, "It's all ice, what's to say you won't just slide off of it and fall off the side of the temple?"

Katara traps her bottom lip between her teeth, thinks about it for a moment before she lowers her gaze (and maybe something sultry bites back at him within those blue eyes, but it's all imagination, at this point, and Zuko is more pleased that they can converse, even trivially). "You'd like that," she says tauntingly, and she reaches her fingers out to walk across his knee, freezing a pathway, "wouldn't you?"

He splutters, swatting her away, and he waits until she snatches her dark hands away before he melts the ice. "I just don't understand how airbenders—how does _Aang_ solve anything like this?"

"I really appreciate Aang, you know," and Zuko wonders what word tripped up her tongue, how deep her appreciation is, "but _this_ has to be the most terrible idea he's come up with, and there have been _plenty_ of terrible ones."

…

It passes so quickly that—

"Are you talking about me?"

He floats over the cliffside so rapidly that both Zuko and Katara scramble away, stirring up dirt underneath their hands as he whirls into place, and Katara's shoulders shrink up with nervousness, her laugh is a flighty, unbelievable thing. It's so obvious to him that they have such a drastic effect on the other, because Katara becomes wobbly around her knees and Aang becomes soft in his skull, and Zuko just _stares_ at them.

It's so easy to forget that they're all children.

And yet, when she says, "Of course not, Aang," there is a gentleness to her voice that melts Aang into nothing but a childish smile and globe of air between his palms, and it's almost like they haven't spent the last five minutes talking about the Avatar at all. But Katara retreats behind Aang, curls starting to fray and frizz with the heat, and she looks over her shoulder to toss him a look.

He doesn't miss it; he smiles at her, and it disarms her.

…

**notes** — this was supposed to be so much shorter, but i couldn't cut any of this out, sorry. if you have a moment, you should leave me a review :)


	4. —how memories are made

**title** — of learning  
**pairing** — katara & zuko, mild aang & katara  
**warnings** — none  
**etc** — my favorite senpais and cheerleaders, thank you for getting me through this

…

**iv. a dragon's mind is not a thing to play with**  
of learning how memories are made  
…

"Tell me something," her voice is surprisingly soft as it drifts down around him, and she, herself, is settling down in her spot across from him, "about when you were young."

And maybe he should mask his shock as to not appear rude, but his eyes widen and his lips part curiously. Zuko looks up at her and she's, fuck, she's _smiling_. He's never seen her this way, not with an effortless smile on her lips like a secret, like her subconscious tugs at the corner of her mouth, and he can't help but stare for a few moments.

Then it quirks, her lips, and she's frowning in confusion. "That's important, isn't it? Why're you looking at me that way?" Zuko sucks in a nervous breath (because he wants to ask, _what way, I'm not looking at you _any _way, Katara_), but the threat of her name in his thoughts is too close and he swallows too quickly, and bursts into violent coughs. He braces his palm against his chest, his other hand clenching dirt underneath his nails, and after a few moments of heavy breathing, his gaze floats back up to her.

Worry and amusement line the tilt of her lips as she speaks. "Are you okay now?" Zuko lifts his shoulders into a shrug and rubs the dirt of his palms onto the leg of his pants, sighing gently.

"I startled myself, I guess," he offers in poor explanation, and her eyebrow notches up before it drops again, either appeased with his meager explanation or nonplussed enough to ask any further question. He coughs again, this time to clear his throat, and his father's voice looms in the back of his head—_you are a _prince_, carry yourself like one, and most importantly, you are my son_—and he blinks the fire out of his eyes, drawing his posture up with square shoulders and neatly folded hands.

"My childhood wasn't like yours," he starts, and ignores the flare of his nerves when her face darkens, "it wasn't very pleasant. So, I don't think you really want to hear about it, and the last thing I need is for you to feel _sorry_ for me." Part of him doesn't mind the idea, but something shreds in brittle pieces inside of him at the thought of cheapened, pitiful sorrow in the stead of forgiveness.

Not after all of this _talking_. He could handle the shambles of whatever unsteady thing they had now—Katara didn't seem to hate him all hours of the day, but he was nowhere close to the circle of her good graces, and he may as well have been stumbling blindingly in the dark in the meantime.

Katara doesn't say anything, although the tremble of her lips tells him that she wants to. She wants to respond to this self-hatred he has ingrained, but Zuko isn't sure she would be much of a combatant for that, all things considered. She speaks, and his eyes flicker up to watch the expressions dance over her face. "Every year, on the day of first snow, my mother would wake us up, like a holiday."

Softly, a smile curves on her face and Zuko is mesmerized, watching her peaceably, "Sokka and I would play in the snowfall and our father would walk all the way through the fresh snow until we couldn't see him anymore. And it was like a game, we screamed, and he came back running." He watches her shift, unfolding her legs to pull her knees against her chest.

Zuko tries to imagine it; round, brown face tucked into a parka, toddling through the snow after her brother, hopping in and out of the large footprints of her father. And somehow, it shifts, to a frightened little girl screaming for her father, and him running back to her in vain. He flinches, and Katara looks at him curiously.

"Once," he finds himself saying, "my mother taught me how to manipulate clay casts. Not that I really _learned_ anything, since I was three, but I remember her melting the clay in bowls over candles, and pouring it into a dish. She made me put my hand in it, and it was hot and sticky and like sludge over my fingers. She told me to wash it off while she finished the cast, but instead I went to tell my father what I did."

His words sit in the back of his throat, heavy and painful, and his chest aches with each breath, but there is so much of a startling difference—at least Katara has the father who comes back running, the one who lets her follow in his footsteps with no burdens. "The clay hardened and I broke my thumb, because my mother asked me what happened," but Zuko remembers the frustration in his father's expression, the way he'd jerked him closer and gripped his tiny hand in his much larger one and peeled the sticky clay off with disdain, rough motions and a sharp turn of his head when Zuko cried out in pain, and it was weeks proved worthless because he couldn't bend with a broken finger, "but that's it. Azula was born after that, and there's not much to really remember worth remembering."

If Katara wants to say something, she does a spectacular job of _not_ saying it. But Zuko doesn't miss the way her eyes seem so bottomless with sorrow, the way she lets her chin sit between the points of her knees to hide the frown on her lips. Silence settles between them for moments at a time, and she watches him. There's something about her eyes that seem so natural, so that Zuko doesn't feel like he's being picked apart by her gaze, and when her eyes stretch in shock, it's because he realizes too late that he's mouthing words to himself.

"Sorry," his cheeks rise in color, pink and embarrassed, "I just…I'm a lot different now than I was when I was young. I never had anything easy, I worked so hard, _too_ hard—I'm just grateful that this is who I am now." And there are certainly parts of himself he could bear to release, like his irascible temper and internally damaging mindset and the wells of effort he had to put into everything. But his life carved at him, painfully, until he became this person sitting in the dirt.

He likes it, he thinks.

"Me too, you know." Katara stands and he stares at her as she moves, stares because those little syllables liken them to each other. And instead, Zuko imagines a girl trying and failing at keeping water cohesive, fighting against herself to be better, fighting against _the Avatar _to be better, and as Aang appears over the side of the temple and Katara rises to meet him, he thinks he understands why he hurt her so badly.

He wishes he could take it all back, but he knows better than anyone that it is a challenge he must overcome. So Zuko watches Katara wrap her arms around Aang, watches the color in her face when the young Airbender tilts his head up and his nose brushes underneath her chin, and resolves himself to change.

…

**notes** — i have had this rolling around in my head for weeks, sorry it took so long to spit out.


End file.
